Russian cases: In this lesson you will see that sometimes instead of saying я, we say меня or мне. That is because я is sometimes the "direct object" in the sentence (and turns into меня) or the "indirect object" (and turns into мне). In English he transforms into him (direct object) in a sentence like "I saw him".

If you want to learn more, visit our course on Russian Cases. Go to lesson 1.

But there is an easier way to create the opposite of an adjective: simply adding "не" to the adjective:хороший (good) - нехороший (not good = bad)красивый (good-looking) - некрасивый (not good-looking = ugly)

Examples of cases seen in this lessonIn Russian we decline pronouns, nouns and adjectives. In other words, pronouns, nouns and adjectives can have "cases".

Now you will see examples of cases from this lesson's dialogues. They are cases of the pronouns you already know (я, ты, он,...). In this lesson you have seen, for example, меня / мне (cases of "я") or тебя / тебе (cases of "ты").

Example taken from dialogue 1:- You saw me yesterday? - Ты видела меня вчера?"Me" is the accusative case of "I". In English we can't say "You saw I yesterday?", we have to transform "I" into "me"."Меня" is the accusative case of "я". In Russian we can't say "Ты видела Я вчера?", we have to transform "я" into "меня".

Example taken from dialogue 3:- I saw you yesterday.- Я видел тебя вчера.In this example "you" doesn't change. We can say "You have money" and "Mary saw you".Pay attention that this doesn't happen to "I", because we say "I have money" and "Mary saw me" (instead of "Mary saw I").In Russian "тебя" is the accusative case of "ты". We can't say "Я видела ты": we have to transform "ты" into "тебя".

The Russian cases

When we decline a word, we classify it in "cases". The grammatical case expresses the function of a word (subject, direct or indirect object...). In Russian there are 6 cases (so far you only know the nominative):

Nominative (subject)

Genitive (possession)

Accusative (direct object)

Dative (indirect object)

Instrumental ("with someone" / "with something")

Prepositional (when there is a preposition before the noun)

*Remember that we have a course to help you with cases. Here you can go to lesson 1.